


To Be Beautiful and Strong

by ariedana



Category: Take That
Genre: Character Study, Food Issues, Gen, Religious Content, donage friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariedana/pseuds/ariedana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of how food and control became one and the same in the life of Jason Orange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Beautiful and Strong

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure why I feel so much like making this clear (considering this is being posted to a fanfic site where it goes without saying) but this is fictional and I absolutely have no way of knowing if this remotely true for RL Jason. There is a lot of information from interviews and books included, but some of those are questionably accurate and truthful at times. So please, do not worry about the real Jay, who is probably fine and probably eating a big curry right now.

Jason didn’t know when he saw that sign in his Sunday School classroom that it would change his life so much. But it did.

 ****  
  
  
It was still a couple of years before he would actually fully know what the sign was talking about, because Doctrine & Covenants 89 requires reading comprehension approaching high school form, even though most Mormon children by that point can recite the rules regarding eating, drinking, and smoking. But by that point Jason was most interested in what was promised in the scripture:  
  
And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones;  
And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;  
And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.  
And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them. Amen.  
  
For some reason, the idea of not being slain by invisible angels was more appealing to Jason than the average lad. Because he thought more about death than most, and was more interested in avoiding it.  
  
From an early age, Jason had cared more about his health than most kids. His mother marvelled that of her six boys, only one would listen to her when she yelled at them about wearing their hats or gloves. Jason was the one who would put them on before she asked, because he didn’t want to catch cold. He actually gave all of the kids their multivitamins every morning as he helped her serve breakfast. And if one of the others got sick, her normally helpful boy was very preoccupied by avoiding the sick person as much as he possibly could. He also became very interested in keeping everything clean, as much as you can in a house with eight people could be in the middle of a Wythenshawe council estate, because by controlling that he could hopefully avoid the avoidance scenario as much as possible.  
  
But that early day when he was 10, looking at the bulletin board put up before that Sunday’s lesson he figured out why his mum had been telling them similar stuff for years when refusing fizzy drink and crisps purchases as a child and as she fed them as many mostly-vegetarian meals as you can manage for a large family on limited income in the early ‘80s. And he suddenly became very interested in continuing that. It was another way to keep everyone healthy.  
  
His teacher held up cardboard cutouts of two figures. One was a figure of a man drawn onto the cardboard, healthy and smiling. The other was of a trash can. She handed each student a representation of a particular type of food - anything from grapes to tomatoes to brand-named items like pasties and chocolates.  
  
“Okay Owen, bring up your item and decide if it’s good for the body or if it’s trash.”  
  
Owen, a small tow-haired boy wearing the same Osmond-esque shaggy bowl cut as Jason and many of the other boys in the class, went to the front with his picture of a McDonald’s Big Mac. He immediately put it on the person.  
  
“Now Owen, think about that one,” the teacher said. “Is there anything in that which actually helps your body?”  
  
“You feel good because it tastes good,” Owen said.  
  
“You do for that moment, but how do you feel after you eat fast food?” the teacher asked. “Your stomach may hurt, or you may want to take a nap. Your body can’t use it, so it’s junk to them and it makes it not work as well. And what does the scripture say about meat?  
  
“That you only use it occasionally, and only in the winter,” Jason piped up. He remembered his mum’s response when she fed them vegetable soup all summer instead of pies.  
  
“Right, Jason,” the teacher smiled at the charmingly grinning Jason. Even at that age, it was hard for every woman in the world not to dissolve around him.  
  
Jason continued to grin. And he liked the idea of keeping his body completely clean. No need to add things that weren’t needed to it, after all.  
  
And even he got older, and much more flexible about his own attachment to the Word of Wisdom, finding ways to dismiss some inconvenient parts for a boyband member - he was joining Take That, not the Jackson 5, and it was almost a sin not to indulge - he did note every time that he broke the rules from his first childhood guide to living, he could actually feel the unnaturalness of it sitting in his body, like a lump of poison that he worried unfeasibly about lurking about until it could combine with other poisons and overwhelm him. It wasn’t something that he could really explain to anyone without sounding mad, but it was part of him.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
By the time Jason joined Take That, his interest in food and health had kicked into a hyperdrive that some would call - only partially joking - obsession. Oddly, the twin catalysts were his burgeoning dance abilities and his family’s leaving of the faith that had motivated the interests in the first place.  
  
With the first thing, it was him doing anything he could to make himself better at the one thing he found that he was a star out. Obviously, you have to be very fit to dance well, and being sick or injured really did have a reason to be feared by Jason, who had been instinctively afraid of them anyway.  
  
But with suddenly no longer being Mormon, no longer having a reason to get up extra-early on Sunday to help Mum get at least two or three squirming brothers ready for church, with suddenly seeing the first fizzy drink in his memory in his mum’s kitchen, with the absence of his father and a lot of uncertainty about what he was supposed to believe or feel about all of this, Jason really needed to believe in something, and that thing is that keeping the things about him that weren’t good for him out.  
  
That was a very ironic thing, because as his time in the band grew longer and longer, he got stricter and stricter in control of his diet, to the point where his main diet was seeds, herbal teas and the most unprocessed grains he could tolerate without dairy - which he couldn’t tolerate in the first place, but later soya milks, because he distrusted how organic the soy would be. He became very, very worried about pesticides. Talk about poison. But in being in the band, he ingested so many more poisons much more willingly. And as the years went on, he was more and more unable to balance filling the holes in his soul with rye bread and pumpkin seeds.  
  
Jason really did feel stronger than he ever had in his life. He told reporters repeatedly that he felt powerful and sexy and all the right things that could be edited into their profiles of his hot deepness. He even talked about his diet a lot in those.  
  
But in reality the diet didn’t always help him in his actual band duties. He’d achieved his dream of being an incredible dancer onstage every night in front of a screaming crowd. Maybe not exactly the type of screaming crowd he’d imagined back in Wythenshawe, where he practiced on his lino fantasizing about being Madonna’s backup dancer (it wasn’t macho to admit to liking her live shows, but Jason didn’t care) but it was focused a little on him and that felt great, especially in the beginning.  
  
As time went on, as the work got more and more intense and Jason got so wrapped up in choreographing the most intense routines that the others would possibly allow, along with the increasingly decadent lifestyle of “sex, drugs and pop ‘n roll” that Mark would someday reference, he needed more fuel instead of less.  
  
On tour random small injuries started to pop up, and then a childhood weakness for tonsillitis made a mid-20s comeback. And Jason publicly and privately beat himself up for bringing it upon himself by not taking care of himself perfectly.  
  
Already his issues with sleep were beginning to pop up, and he developed a love of red wine that came about five years earlier than most men, and it was especially intense because his controlled diet did nothing to help his alcohol tolerance. So he blamed those things and those alone for not keeping sickness away despite his avoidances.  
  
But then one day after a particularly energetic rehearsal of “Give Good Feeling”, Jay suddenly slumped to the floor at Howard’s feet.  
  
It was not as easy to scoop Jason up in those days as it would be now - his time onstage and in his increasingly intense yoga practice had made him muscled enough to weigh deceptively heavy - but it was still far too easy, Howard thought as he looked down on his semi-conscious friend. Jason had been shirtless at rehearsal, and Howard fancied that Jason’s six-pack was more ribs than abs.  
  
The group’s physio arrived quickly and worked Jason over, pronouncing that he was very healthy overall but anemic, needing more protein and different nutrients than he was getting on his limited diet. Maybe he should re-add some meat.  
  
“But it’s summer!” Jason protested before he could stop himself. The others stared at him after he said it, not having ever heard of an objection to eating meat in the summer.  
  
“Nevermind that,” Jason said, kicking himself for not quite clearing out the Mormon instincts out of him. They had stuck around worryingly at times over the years, particularly during his nights on the pull where he had to chuck all of their rules about other ways of keeping the body pure and holy for future eternal marriages, etc. out the window. “I’ll figure out some way to get the protein in. Just not a lot of meat.”  
  
“You’ll eat a lot of meat if I bloody well say so,” Nigel said snarkily, standing slightly to the right of Jason’s shoulder, close enough to give Jason the familiar sickening feelings he got in close proximity to his manager. “You have too much to lose if you get too sick to dance, Orange. Always replaceable.”  
  
Everyone else in the room winced, whilst Howard looked slightly indignant, only restraining himself from a rare argument with Nigel by the look in Jason’s eyes after.  
  
It’s funny, all the poisons he’d ingested willingly and unwillingly over the years - the occasional drug indulgence, the punishing lifestyle, the ways he hadn’t been able to control absolutely everything he said or did. But the one thing that made him the sickest, every single day, was the one thing he was so unable to control - that he had given Nigel far too much reign over his soul.  
  
\----------------------------  
  
It was ironic that the only times he really let himself not constrain his diet so much was on excursions with the boys - mostly on tour, but sometimes to the Manchester curry houses. It’s the places where Gary and Jay would sneak out to on tour, or when Gaz was so in need of being dug out from under his music pressures that Jason would practically drag him out for kormas some afternoons. It was the best memories - the Cafe Opera, the real Japanese food, the wonderful Australian steaks and shiraz - and those were the places where he felt most safe and at ease in an increasingly confusing universe.  
  
It was also ironic because Rob’s sacking happened right after a shared curry dinner. It almost put Jason off curry for awhile. Which was yet another thing to be pissed at Rob about.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
No one on earth knows about it beyond a couple of clueless takeaway delivery people, but one night about three months after the breakup Jason completely lost control.  
  
It was during his first night in Manchester post-breakup and past his extended break at the Lakes. He came back to his house, realized that unlike past minibreaks, he did not have a new album to come back to work on, and he lost the plot slightly. But not in the way of your average pop star post-breakup.  
  
He ate at McDonald’s. He ate at KFC. He indulged his teenage penchant for kebabs, remembering carefree summer dates with girls back before he became a dancing piece of meat. And ice cream! He loved ice cream, but years of worrying about dairy and its alternatives and a phobia of refined sugar was a bit of an issue there. But not this day. And the cheaper and sweeter the better. He was sick of being picky.  
  
Obviously being in control of everything he could be had done a hell of a lot of good for the band. And now the band was gone, and fuck all if all the had to control was himself, suddenly.  
  
Soon enough that would seem like the greatest blessing ever. But for now he missed his friends and what they had all lost. And he ate his fudge ripple quart.  
  
\--------------------------------  
  
Over the next few years, his eating habits evolved, mainly because he had the time to properly research things and find ways to adapt for his needs. He learnt more about cooking, more about juicing, about food combos and superfoods and how to avoid all those pesky chemicals in new ways as “natural” food slowly became more mainstream. Eventually it evolved to the point where he could actually go places like Pret A Manger and not constantly judge himself about eating fast food. Someday that would cause friction with Howard about Nando’s, though.  
  
But his best times with food were when he was being social, like those curry excursions in the band. And as time went on, as he travelled abroad and met loads of random people and finally spent proper time with friends, he began to really enjoy the experiences of eating curry in Thailand, in nights at a sushi bar with his twin and their friends, in nights out in coffeehouses when his long hair actually allowed him to enjoy his own musical indulgences without music snobs recognizing him and making remarks. The remarks really got to him - snide remarks about his bandmates, about Rob, about the girls and the money. Someday they would be useful for an onstage segment during their comeback, but for now they make him want to go back to his flat and hide a few days.  
  
But over the years, things like that happening became more and more infrequent, and he almost felt like a normal bloke who might fade into the fancy paintwork of his London flat if he hadn’t been attractive. And suddenly that was something to be comfortable in.  
  
Some people might say he can’t sing, that he’s boring or arrogant or a dilettante at being truly deep. Or even that he’s inauthentic, his least favourite possible label. But no one on earth had ever claimed that Jason Orange wasn’t beautiful. Even if it wasn’t a label he felt a need to exploit like he might’ve during the Take That years, when there was a need to prop up his sex god image through action, it was still something that he worried enough about that he worried about worrying. And staying slim, even being more streamlined and less muscle-bound than he was previously, didn’t hurt anything there.  
  
\----------------------  
  
The beauty of Take That reforming the second time was because they not only changed the rules of pop stardom for themselves, they pretty much threw them out and did their own thing.  
  
For one thing, all of the boys now had an interest in healthy eating. Gary, formerly the one who rebelled against food restrictions, now was as strict as Jason. It was interesting as the polar opposites, who had given each other a lot of stick about eating and weight back in the day, actually ended up on the same pole this time around. Jason had a lot of pride in Gary for his comeback after gaining weight post-career collapse, and Gary admired Jason for being way ahead of the curve on keeping fit. It certainly helped him be able to jump back into the tour rehearsal madness.  
  
This time around they all had an interest in yoga and stretching, especially Howard, who was especially afraid of showing his age onstage in bad ways. After the punctured lung incident on the Beautiful World tour, even if that wasn’t caused by age or physical weakness, they all became very mindful of avoiding having THAT happen again.  
  
Most of all, once again food became social in the best way possible. Chinese takeaway from the Notting Hill shop that actually served brown rice with their orders and insisted to Jay that they didn’t use corn syrup. More curries, especially the memorable ones at Jay and Justin’s 40th birthday party. Fun and laughs at the bar after tour gigs. And when hanging out with the dancers and musicians during the tours, there was now always a lot going on that didn’t involve food. Like the pre-show workout sessions, and the backstage jams and the late-night hangouts with various band people that mostly involved copious amounts of red wine.  
  
Because the schedule was looser than the old days, with much less time out on the road for promo, things were easier in the off time also. He could cook his soups and freeze them to be toted in carry-on luggage to interviews and shows. He spent plenty of days at home, content with copious amounts of green tea and various vegetable-based concoctions and - every now and then - the random takeaway curry. On the days that he couldn’t be bothered to cook, takeaways from Whole Foods weren’t uncommon. It’s amazing what you can find in the frozen section these days.  
  
But with getting back together and suddenly becoming more famous than the first time, his ease of life outside the band and outside his flat disappeared. It didn’t matter what he did to his hair or his clothes or how many sunglasses he put on, he was recognized. And now it wasn’t a concern about getting the mickey. It’s the bloody cameraphones in mobiles. It’s the inability to smoke a fag outside a restaurant without being judged by hundreds of people he didn’t know, or not being able to go into a bloody clothes shop without being literally stampeded.  
  
As time goes on, the imbalance gets harder and harder to bear, and suddenly old ghosts reappear.  
  
\-------------------------  
  
If there was anything to blame anyone about things - and really in Jason’s opinion there wasn’t, because as far as he was concerned there was nothing particularly bad about it - Rob wasn’t to blame for how Jason took a public step back during the Progress cycle. If anything, any stress that was Rob-related was not about Rob himself, but how everyone else reacted to Rob being back - the paranoia about causing drama, the fans who were sometimes divided on the prospect, the press who just wouldn’t let them put the past to bed completely.  
  
The simple fact was that Jason was exhausted. The break between Circus Live and the first writing sessions for Progress was very short, and sometimes Jason found himself slightly missing the days when he looked forward from a tour and didn’t see another album looming ahead. And no matter how well he took care of himself, even with all the precautions and supplements and yoga that had helped his physique remain flexible, there were aches and pains after routines that were there the first time around and which age added new complications to. One knee had arthritis now. He was particularly vigilant about keeping his arms in good shape, hoping that he can keep his cervical vertebra strong enough to allow the head-spinning to condition, but even with all the attention there were more times than not that he was left needing massages after a tough rehearsal..  
  
Adding Rob into the mix, with the cameras and press interest and neverending discussion about what this would result in, made the writing process far from stress-free. The tour was huge - there was so much to live up to after Circus Live - and longer and with more and more cast members and more and more to do and not quite as much fun as he’s had on the previous tours. Maybe it was getting older, maybe more with just being tired and being done with the whole, well, circus. To the point where when he absolutely didn’t have to be on a press call, he often wasn’t there.  
  
With the exhaustion spiralling again, so much like before, without Nigel in reality anymore but always whispering in the back of his mind, he no longer had interest in eating whatsoever. He’s been frank about not caring about missing meals before, but now there was an outright rebellion. Aside from his soups, which were a bit of a comfort blanket at times when he sat in places where a lot of eyes were evaluating him, he didn’t make any effort to eat more than the necessary protein that keeps him from collapsing again.  
  
Once again, poisons enter his mind more than ever. Whilst he was so glad that everything had turned out as it had, facing his fears and suddenly having real professional success that he felt a valuable part of, there always seemed to be things lurking that would threaten those. If his arthritic knee needs replacing, that would probably be the end of a lot of dance routines for a long time. If the stress on his stomach keeps manifesting itself with knots, with nausea and a general distaste for food, it also has an effect on his head. No real migraines, but tension headaches so common that even the shock of sunshine can cause a horrible day.  
  
Something in his life was defeating all of his efforts for the past 20 years to never, ever be sick. For someone who had so much success in their lives, sometimes it’s the little personal things that seem like the biggest failures.  
  
\------------------------------  
  
This time only Howard witnessed the collapse. And this time it wasn’t after a big physical routine, but more mentally based.  
  
It was the night after the last tour date, in Munchen, and he’s gone to the after-party and seen Howard spin and it was all enormously fun and distracting, especially whilst the red wine was flowing. But when Howard got back to the hotel that night after the his duties were completed, he found Jason almost collapsed on the floor outside his hotel room, almost as if he’d started crouching like in the When We Were Young video and then just fell flat on the floor when the balancing was just too much. He didn’t have a glass or a bottle or anything, but it was clear he had had a few that night. And it was also clear that his eyes were red.  
  
Howard didn’t run up and attempt to sweep him up into his arms again. Even if it would be worryingly easy for him to carry him anywhere and everywhere. He didn’t even attempt to make a fuss. Jason hated fusses. To admit help from others might be needed was to admit he didn’t have that bloody control.  
  
So he plopped down beside Jason, laptop bag falling alongside him, and just sat. Eventually Jason seemed so drained that he slumped alongside him, letting his head drape on Howard’s broad shoulder, letting Howard’s soggy curls tickle his brow..  
  
“Mate, didn’t you learn anything about how to get ready for a night out?” Howard asked. “You have to keep your strength up. Even if it’s the last time you have to give a shit about it for awhile.”  
  
“But that’s it,” Jason almost whispered. “It’s over again, at least for a long while. And I’m going home without an album to look forward to. It’s like the breakup all over again.”  
  
“Whoa, we’re not breaking up!” Howard said forcefully. squeezing Jason’s shoulder to reassure himself as much as Jason. “It’s a hiatus. We know we’ll be back. Just not in a matter of months as it’s been.”  
  
“I know, and that’s mostly my doing, I think,” Jason said. “And I’m grateful for that. But I didn’t realize how much I depend on this again. This band. This family who eats together and has fun together, and I feel like it’s slipping away again.”  
  
Howard sighed.  
  
“I know, Jay,” he said. “Who cries at the end of every tour? It was bound to be your turn eventually. We all do it.”  
  
“But you’re crying because it won’t be going on any longer and you miss it,” he said. “I’m crying because it’s over and I can’t do anything about it, or control when it’ll be back.”  
  
Howard scratched his head.  
  
“Jay, you could never be accused of making half sense,” he said.  
  
Jason shrugged.  
  
“Maybe I’m just afraid that Father Time is going to leave me redundant someday soon,” he said. “I’ve tried to keep that away for a long time.”  
  
Howard chuckled and laid a quick kiss onto Jason’s still-sweaty brow.  
  
“Haven’t you learnt your lesson yet, Jay?” he said quietly. “You are not just a pretty boy spinning on his head. You’re the brains and the soul of the operation.”  
  
“You can talk,” Jason said, cutting himself with his words. “You can actually sing. Your job’s forever safe.”  
  
“Jay, love, shut the hell up,” Howard argued. “You can certainly sing. You sing a LOT now. And we’re not a charity that doles out lyrics to people out of the goodness of our hearts.”  
  
Jason couldn’t help but chuckle. He also couldn’t argue.  
  
“Does it have to be over?” he asked. “Do I have to go home alone and figure out what to do now that walking outside is a collection of unwanted photo ops?”  
  
Howard shook his head.  
  
“It’s not over,” he said. “And you’re not going home alone.”  
  
That made Jason snuggle closer in that cold German hotel corridor.  
  
\------------------------  
  
Things really didn’t change so much with Jay’s eating over the hiatus. It still was both his greatest obsession and the thing he cared least about on earth. He was tired of fighting the fight between the cardboard person and the trash can in Sunday school. He was weary of his nightly internal search for all the poisons he’d picked up over the past day, as if thinking about them would make them disappear.  
  
Instead, Howard joined him in his struggles, took more of an interest in Jason’s health research and theories and plans to keep everything functioning on such a high level that he wouldn’t have to worry about anything being a threat to the beautiful-to-everyone image that Jason was loathe to admit had been a source of pride. He also grew to love cooking more and more.  
  
Some nights he and Jason ended up at one or the other’s homes, left the kitchen to each other and took a little delight in surprising each other with what happened. Instead of continuing his Asian obsession endlessly, Jason was enjoying reinterpreting Middle-eastern classics in a healthier way. His way of getting back in the kebab shops of his youth, in a sense. On the other hand, Howard enjoyed proving to Jason that German cuisine was not just about schnitzel, and even the parts that were could be declawed nutritionally a bit.  
  
But some nights, the special nights in Howard’s eyes, were the ones where Jason came over, having picked up a pizza along the way, and Howard would start cracking open a six-pack brought over from his last Germany trip, and they would just hang out like any other two single guys in England would do. Drinking, eating questionably healthy food, watching old Gervais shows and having continual joking arguments about the things one was interested in that the other hated. Like Howard’s Top Gear obsession. And Jason’s love of Simon and Garfunkel.  
  
Howard knew that when Jason could feel comfortable enough to do it, he could pack in some food. So he wasn’t surprised by how big of a share of a large pizza he could eat in one sitting.  
  
And Jason knew that as long as they lived, Howard would never poke fun about it.


End file.
